Piece Comment

Review of The Olfactograph


Jamie O’Shea’s Olfactograph turns objects into smells. The sense of smell is so intimately connected to memory, that it’s like he is creating a potion that acts as a nexus to the past. He has even distilled the scent of a bath toy down to a liquid. For the most part, the sound in the piece interacts nicely with O’Shea’s voice, creating a rather impressionistic, cinematic effect. What I would have enjoyed is more about how he became so obsessed with smell that he decided to create such an oddity. It would have given the whole thing a more personal dimension. Still, an audio piece about smell does show moxy. This could fit nicely in to a magazine show.